What if I told you our bank encryption system has not been proven as unbreakable? We’ve been interviewing Marlon Duran, a scientist working on a project to arrive to an algorithm that would be capable of factorizing the RSA number. Learn more about it on this video
Have you ever stopped to think how fast and how much the world is changing? It is crazy to think that 7 years ago we had no whatsapp, or that 58 years ago the most commonly used car in Spain was the mythical Seat 600. As the years have gone by there have been many changes in the different industries, but it catches my attention to see how the automobile industry has changed. Who would have ever thought that cars would park on their own? But there is something crazier than that. Theres a project being managed by BMW to make a car that can be molded in the shape you want: “The GINA”.
The GINA is a new approach that is looking for the satisfaction of all the costumers. BMW wants the costumers to establish a close relationship with their cars and what a better way than shaping your car the way you want. The principle is therefore the granting of more freedom for car design. GINA stands for “Geometry and Functions in “N” Adaptions” which basically means that designers from BMW were allowed to throw out the rulebook (N stands for infinite).
And what does that mean? Well it is evidently once you see the car. The outer skin of the car breaks all the schemes. The shell has a textile fabric on top of a frame of metal and carbon fiber wires, so there is no trace of metal on the surface of the car. Furthermore, the skeleton of the car is controlled by electro hydraulic devices that can move and change the shape beneath the fabric skin.
One of the key concepts has been the headlights. These can be hidden or exposed by the cars skin just like blinking eyes. Also, the hood opens from the center. The doors open in a jack-knife fashion and are smooth when closed. All of these things are very innovative and push the boundaries of appearance and materials, as well as functions and the manufacturing process.
The Director of Design of BMW Group, Chris Bangle said: “For instance to get an idea of what the sculptural form between a fender and a wheel arch is, you really only need a line around the wheels and a line where you want the fender to be, and then you just let the material do the talking in between.” Meaning that there is no need of having a specific structure for the car.
The GINA is built on the Z8 chassis and has a 4.4 liter V8 and six-speed automatic transmission. The skin-polyrurethane-coated lycra is resilient, water resistant and durable. The skin as mentioned above leaves you the opportunity to handle the structure of the car any way you want. Want wider fenders, a big spoiler on the back? No problem. You can now have it.
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It is the work done by Dae – Hyeong Kim and his team of South Korean researchers. They research on how to build an artificial skin that in the future can cover prosthesis, for example , arms and legs , to provide them not only their mechanical function but also give them sensation.
This skin is made up of very thin layers of monocrystalline silicon (the same material from which chips are built). Moreover, each of these layers has a thickness of about three microns. This small thickness is key to achieve one of the fundamental properties of our skin that is the flexibility. Therefore, this artificial skin can stretch up to 50% without affecting the performance of sensors placed in it. This means that it is even more elastic than our skin, which typically does not stretch more than 15 %.
In line with this, the skin consists of several thin layers in which the first one is an insulating matrix. Followed by this layer, there is a thin layer made of gold that is intended to serve as a heater and keep the skin at a temperature of 36.5 ° C. For this, the Joule Effect is used: it circulates a small current through the skin, and the current dissipates heat. As a result, the artificial skin has a similar temperature to our skin.
The third layer is an array of pressure, stretch and heat sensors. Heat sensors are based on silicon diodes that detect temperature changes on the outside.
The most complicated feeling to imitate in this new type of skin is moisture. Nowada
ys we do not know exactly how, for example, our skin is able to differentiate a moist heat or a dry cold. To achieve the simulation of this feeling, researchers used small capacitors which vary their capacity depending on the presence of water molecules on their outside. This is the fourth layer of the skin.
The fifth and the last layer of the skin is made up of the connections that allow collection of information from sensors. This was tested with rats and until now, they have been able to verify that rats actually felt them, although to be completely sure they will need to use bigger animals.
This prototype skin is a significant advance to build a functional bionic skin. One of the great challenges that is still left is how to connect the skin to the nervous system of the patient permanently and without producing any rejection or complication in the patient.
The skin has a lot of sensors that provide independent information, and to simulate the behavior of our skin we would need to collect information independently and transmit it to the brain to be able to distinguish sensations that occur in different regions of the skin. This is the major challenge that is still unresolved.
This technology shows us that the advances in health and engineering sectors can, not only replace those parts that have been amputated, but also give them the opportunity of feeling again, which takes us a step further in the improvement of people’s lives, that is essentially the objective of an engineer.
Walking in the street, everyone has seen a hybrid logo on a car, but have you ever seen a hybrid boat? Hybrid cars, with electric motor and internal combustion engines, are a good way to achieve cleaner road transport while it is also possible to use the traditional engine if necessary. What’s new is that the naval industry is now moving in the same “green” direction, trying to be more environmentally friendly and giving more uses to new technologies by applying them in different aspects and sectors.
The thing is that too many people do not realize what a hybrid transport can achieve, it’s advantages and how it would affect the world. So, with engineers looking to increase efficiency and reduce sound levels, the question is raised: Will hybrid power ever work for boats?
The concept is that when a hybrid coasts or brakes, the momentum of the vehicle charges the batteries, providing power that is essentially free. However, this does not happen with boats. Deriving regenerative energy from powerboats would seem to have a loss of speed and therefore efficiency. In addition, there is no braking from which to capture wasted energy. Although all this can seem to be not very important, wasted energy is the difference between a hybrid working efficiently or not.
The company ABB is convinced that vessels equipped with a hybrid main propulsion machinery are the future, and the company expects to sign its first contract during this year. Norway in collaboration with the company MARINTEK and the SINTEF (Foundation for Scientific and Industrial Research, a Norwegian institution that is the largest independent research organization in Scandinavia) are also making notable progress and experimenting with this.
One of the main advantages of hybrid propulsion systems is that it significantly reduces both fuel consumption and emissions. Fuel savings can be between 10 and 15 percent and regarding emissions, the result is the cut in carbon dioxide (CO2) and other pollutants emissions. Moreover, some interesting advantages are:-the boat will be free of odors as well as smoke and noise.-there will also be an absence of vibrations, so the conception of dizziness on board decrease.-another of the facilities is that it is not necessary to make any stop to refuel, as a result comfort is remarkable.
To conclude, many companies are taking into account inserting hybrid engines in boats as a future development that not only will affect by increasing our knowledge in the shipping industry, but an important improvement in the pollution and environmental damage that boats make nowadays.
Graeme Hawsksley, the director of Hybrid Marine, has invested six years to develop a viable hybrid system for the marine market. It uses an electric motor of 10 kW (13 hp) connected by a Yanmar saildrive. The electric motor is coupled to an electronic controller that handles sophisticated energy management control system .The electric motor also acts as a generator when the boat is propelled by the wind thus charging the batteries using a 1kW power generated. This makes that for sailing we are able to charge the batteries in order to enter and leave the port maneuvering in pure electric mode. Furthermore, the electric motor can propel a ship mode of 14 meters in length to about six knots an hour with the energy stored in a battery fleet consists of four elements 100 Ah. The price of the equipment is € 5,550.
What would you think if I told
you that, in the future, airplanes are going to be made out of a plants? Would you think I’m crazy? Well it might sound odd, but if you think about it is not a bad idea after all. Why shouldn’t we use a material that is natural, less expensive and easy to grow?
The truth is that, before, there was no need to search for new materials, as the use of composite materials from petroleum was the solution. However, as the years have passed we have become more conscious of the effect we are having on our environment and the need for natural materials has increased.
As of now, there have been many projects trying to build a plane out of natural materials such as bamboo or wood; however, they haven’t been very successful. Perhaps the project that has gone the furthest was a remote control plane made by the University of Virginia which was made of bamboo and can hold about 25 pounds (11.34 kg) of load, but it only measures 225 inches (5.715 m). Another thing that is being developed is a plane interior made of flax, which is explained in the following video:
As mentioned above, companies are searching for materials that can “green up” the industries, and interest has been put upon materials that can have a high performance and that at the same time are sustainable and eco-friendly products. Natural fibers are the solution to this. Today, there is a company called HempEarth that has taken interest in a plant called hemp, that believe it or not has very similar mechanical properties to those of composite materials used in airplanes, such as glass fiber.
Hemp is sometimes confused with weed, because they come from the same family and the leaf is very similar. Yet, hemp lacks the THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) that is abundant in weed, which is the ingredient that gets people “high”. The THC content of industrial hemp is around 0.5% to 1%, which it is very small compared to the 10%- 20% weed contains. Furthermore, the mechanical properties of hemp are very similar to that of glass fiber, as mentioned above. Some of these properties include specific density, strain, and elastic modulus, and it is even stronger than the mentioned synthetic material. Also, since hemp grows without the use of insecticides, herbicides or pesticides, the plane will have a lower carbon footprint than that of a normal airplane.
The project that is now being pursued is a airplane built from 75% hemp. The natural fiber will be used to build very important parts, which include the wings and the outer shell. Furthermore, it will be a four-seat, two-engine aircraft, will have a cruising speed of over 340 km/h and a wingspan of 12 meters. If this airplane actually works and is able to fly it will change the aerospace industry completely, and will lead to a positive impact on our environment.
I’m not going to start this post with a bunch of statistics on women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). It’s not that those statistics are not useful, because they do help raise awareness on the discrimination that women aspiring to work in STEM nowadays face and the inequalities in salaries for different genders. However, there are thousands of Internet pages showing these statistics, so, instead, I’m going to begin with a short video:
(I’m afraid youtube doesn’t allow embedding of this video, so I’ll have to leave you the link on the image bellow)
Now, there’s something really interesting in this video, and it’s the part where Carla, the interviewee, says she’s not “a woman engineer”, but simply an engineer. To me, this statement raises a key issue. For centuries, women were kept away from jobs in general, and even longer from jobs in STEM. Then, there came a point where women had enough and rose in protest, sometimes even sacrificing their liberty or their safety to gain rights for the women to come. This was what was needed at the time, a radical swing of the pendulum in order to pursue equilibrium. The problem is, equilibrium was not reached. Instead, we are faced with a situation where we are trying to fight discrimination with more discrimination.
Let me elaborate. I’m referring, of course, to the so-called positive discrimination, or affirmative action, which is essentially a set of policies that are designed to favor a discriminated group, for example, by establishing a percentage of women that must be hired in each company. In theory, this sounds perfectly reasonable: since not enough women are being hired, force companies to hire them. However, in practice this is counterproductive, for a number of reasons.
First of all, positive discrimination is sort of like when a country takes a company under their protective wing. That company is cherished and promoted, to the point where it no longer needs to make an effort to maintain the monopoly. Then, when the country’s protection is removed, the company is incapable of fending off for itself in a competitive market, and so, goes bankrupt. The same thing goes for positive discrimination: it might create an illusion of equality while it lasts, but it’s not actually fighting off discrimination at its root.
Now, you might be thinking, “what’s the problem? Simply don’t remove the policies at all, and so there will be no backlash”. The problem is that, regardless of how loud you might say the “positive” in front of “discrimination”, the fact remains that the “discrimination” is still there, which makes it just as unfair as “negative” discrimination. Affirmative action doesn’t just mean that, when faced with two identical curricula from a man and a woman, the company must choose the woman. It additionally means that sometimes a less qualified person will be chosen for a job simply because she is a woman, which is precisely what we were trying to fight in the first place, but with the other gender. This is not only hypocritical, but also generates a hatred that will not help equality in any way.
The way I see it, the problem that needs to be tackled is the distinction between “woman engineer” and “engineer”. Engineers who happen to be women don’t want a golden star for their troubles, they simply want all the obstacles against them to be eliminated so they can do their job. This is something that will not be achieved through “an eye for an eye”, but through education from young ages, tackling this discrimination at its root by making children see a woman engineer as an everyday occurrence. I’m not trying to say that female engineers should be content with the present situation of discrimination until education manages to eliminate biases, but the way I see it women are perfectly capable of proving their self-worth without the need of affirmative action, and this, after education, is the best way to show the world the women belong in engineering.
As we have previously mentioned, your comments are always welcome, so go ahead and write your opinion in the comment box bellow. We leave you this video with different opinions from professionals to inspire you:
If you follow our blog closely, you may have noticed that most of our posts are usually technical, or talk about innovation in engineering. This is quite natural, and certainly what you first think of when you hear “engineering”. However, we know that engineers nowadays cannot ignore other aspects outside the technical like the economic situation of the world or certain moral aspects related to our jobs, so we have decided to acknowledge this with a couple of more “philosophical” posts, of which this one is the first one.
In this time of crisis that we are living in most of the countries in Europe, many undergraduate students are afraid of their future. Engineering has always been one of the most recognized carriers, but nowadays the profile that many companies look for in engineers has changed. Companies seek engineering leaders, which is not easy for students due to the poorly focused teachings at most engineering schools, where leadership is not taught. Students nowadays have to transition from technical professionals to technical managers through experience and observation that they must acquire in few jobs, when they feel forced to lead a group or solve a problem.
It takes time and effort to become an engineering manager, especially because we are used to working with machines, not with humans, and to solve mathematical problems, using calculators or other computer programs, but no one has ever taught us how we must work in group, how patient we must be, how different areas are interrelated to solve a problem. But what is, really, an engineering leader? To answer this, let’s see a short video (by Calit2ube):
As you saw, being an engineering leader is not as easy as it may seem. To become a leader you have to improve certain skills. You have to know how to communicate with your team, to keep them motivated and active. That’s why communication skills are so important for every single professional, independently of their sector or area of work (you can learn more about communication skills in our post “Communication skills for engineering“). Additionally, the leader must inspire and guide the rest of workers to achieve the objectives of the company. They must accept changes and have initiative, but most importantly, believe in what they are doing and transmit that passion to their coworkers and employees.
The professionals in the video had varying opinions about whether a leader is born or made. Personally, I think it’s a bit of both, but the most important part about a leader is their attitude. So, what can you do to try to become an engineering leader? Well, you can try taking a self-assessment as a leader, and also get feedback from people around you about your leadership style. You can also try to manage a work group with your classmates, visit some companies and see how they work, how many areas is it divided into and how they are related with each other. Always keep in mind that, though you want your coworkers and employees to work as one, they are individual people, and you must treat them as such. Respect them, and don’t forget that saying a kind word of appreciation never hurt anyone. You’ll keep them happy, and they’ll be more motivated to work.
We’d love to know your opinion on this matter, so feel free to comment and even strike up a debate.
In a world where the Internet and computers in general are increasingly important, it is often easy to forget that the achievements in technology are directly linked to the materials used for that technology. Materials engineers and scientists are constantly looking for ways to improve designs through the use of new materials. In line with this, we have some materials that come and go without anybody noticing, and materials that look promising from the moment of their discovery. The latter is the case for carbon nanotubes, an innovative material that we will expand on in this post.
Carbon nanotubes are sheets of graphite, an allotropic form of carbon (as are diamond or fullerene) rolled into cylinders. The diameter of t
he tubes is typically of nanometer dimensions (hence the name), while the lengths are in the order of micrometers. This ratio leads to unusual electrical properties, like excellent electric conductivity. Notably some tubes behave as metals and others as semiconductors.
Carbon nanotubes where first discovered by Iijima, a Japanese physicist, in 1991 when he was studying the synthesis of fullerenes by using electric arc discharge technique (which we will explain later). The high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) was employed for observation of that phenomenon. Carbon nanotubes that Lijima observed were called multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs).
And what’s this about multi-walled carbon nanotubes? Well, there are two types of carbon nanotubes depending on their structure: single-walled tubes and multi-walled tubes.
Most single-walled nanotubes (SWNTs) have a diameter in the range of 1.2 to 1.4 nm with a tube length that can be many millions of times longer. The structure of a SWNT can be imagined as wrapping a one-atom-thick layer of graphite called graphene into a seamless cylinder.
The MWCNT, on the other hand, is the union of SWCNT structures concentrically. The diameters of MWNT are typically in the range of 5 nm to 50 nm and the interlayer distance in MWNT is around 0.34 nm. MWNT are easier to produce in high volume quantities than SWNT. However, the structure of MWNT is of greater complexity and variety, and therefore is not well understood.
Applications of nanotubes
There are many possible applications for carbon nanotubes because of their unique properties. An example of this are CNT muscles capable of lifting 200 times the weight lifted by a human muscle of the same size, made of CNT yarn filled with paraffin wax. When they are heated either electrically or with light, the wax expands and this causes the yarn itself to get wider and shorter due to the way it is woven.
Nanotubes bound to an antibody that is produced by chickens have been shown to be useful in lab tests to destroy breast cancer tumors. The antibody-carrying nanotubes are attracted to proteins produced by one type of breast cancer cell because of the differences between the avian and human genes. Once attached to these cells, the nanotubes absorb light from an infrared laser, incinerating the nanotubes and the attached tumor.
CNT have caused so much excitement that some people are even speculating about the possibility of building a space elevator using nanotubes for a cable, but the problem with this idea is that, at the moment, the lengths that can be achieved from CNT synthesis are nowhere near long enough for a space elevator.
There are also other problems with carbon nanotubes at the moment; mainly their relatively high cost and the difficulty to mass-produce them. Not only this, but there is also need for proper toxicity testing, since it is not quite clear yet what the effects of this material could be on human health.
All in all, CNTs seem to be an extremely promising material, but we mustn’t get ahead of ourselves, as there is still a lot of testing to be done.
It is now that we finally explain the purpose behind all our videos! Watch this for tips on communication skills.
If you’ve ever wondered how satellites get put into orbit, this video is perfect for you!
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